The present invention relates generally to conveyors, and more particularly to the control, installation, and operation of conveying systems.
Conveyor systems are used in a wide variety of material handling applications. These includes such things as conveying luggage throughout airports, conveying parcels through transportation terminals, conveying manufactured parts or components throughout factories, conveying inventory, sorting and conveying items to be transported, and various other applications. Such conveying systems may use conveyors having endless belts that are rotated around end rollers to cause the top surface of the belt to move in the direction of conveyance. Such conveying systems alternatively may use conveyors having a series of rollers, selected ones of which are driven to cause articles positioned on the rollers to move in the direction of conveyance. An example of one such roller conveyor is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,909 issued to Kalm et al, entitled MODULAR POWER ROLLER CONVEYOR, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. Still other types of conveyors may use movable slats to transport articles, as well as other structures.
Prior conveying systems typically include emergency buttons or other types of switches positioned about the area in which the conveyors of the system operate. The buttons are often referred to as emergency stop buttons, or E-stops for short. These buttons can be pressed in an emergency to shut off power to the conveyors so that they come to a rapid halt. After one of these buttons has been pressed, there is often a certain amount of time and work that must be expended to re-start the system, particularly where a computer-based control is used to control all or a portion of the conveyor system. The termination of the power to the conveyor system may cause the system to lose track of the position of articles on the conveyors. In such situations, re-starting the system may require that at least some articles have to be taken off of the conveyors and re-initiated into the system. In those situations in which power is maintained to the controls after an E-stop has been activated, the wiring of the E-stop switch has often involved separate wires running outside of the conveyor beds. These wires must be properly protected from damage by personnel or machines within the environment, and the installation and protection of these wires often adds time and expense to the conveying system installation, which are desirably reduced or eliminated.
Further time-consuming tasks involved with installing prior conveying systems include the tasks necessary to supply power to all of the conveyor sections in the conveying system. Past conveying systems have often required a relatively large number of power distribution panels that electrically connect to the conveyor beds to provide power. The installation of many power panels, as well as the installation and connection of the various cables and wires that connect these to the conveyor beds themselves, is a task that is desirably simplified.